Source: cirosantilli/super-resolution-microscopy

= Super-resolution microscopy
{title2=2014 Nobel Prize in Physics}
{wiki}

Super-resolution means resolution beyond the <diffraction limit>.

First you shine a lot of light which saturates most <fluorophores>, leaving very few active.

They you can observe <fluorophores> firing one by one. Their exact position is a bit stochastic and beyond the <diffraction limit>, but so long as there aren't to many in close proximity, you can wait for it to fire a bunch of times, and the center of the <Gaussian> is the actual location.

From this we see that super-resolution microscopy is basically a space-time tradeoff: the more time we wait, the better spacial resolution we get. But we can't do it if things are moving too fast in the sample.

Tradeoff with <cryoEM>: you get to see things moving in live cell. <Electron microscopy> fully kills cells, so you have no chance of seeing anything that moves ever.

Caveats:
* initial illumination to saturate most fluorophores I think can still kill cells, things get harder the less light you put in. So it's not like you don't kill things at all necessarily, you just get a chance not to
* the presence fluorophore disturbs the system slightly, and is not at the same Exact location of the protein of interest